Are we facing a war in Europe or the Third World War?

Two years of the coronavirus pandemic left the world traumatized by disease, death, discouragement, disunity, government wear and tear, global recession, and inflation. The last thing the planet needed, just as it begins to leave the epidemic behind, has just happened: another war. And it is no longer just any war, it is a confrontation between states, a phenomenon that seemed distant in the 21st century, dominated by civil conflicts, such as those of the “Arab spring”, or hybrid wars.

The full invasion of Russia to Ukraine marks the return of the warlike conflict between states that defined the First and Second World Wars. A great military power – the third on a global scale – breaks into a smaller country, which, in turn, has the support of other nations. The story sounds painfully familiar. They are, as a diplomatic source defined it to the Reuters agency, “the darkest hours in Europe” since 1945. Is the world then at the gates of Third World war? Some keys allow defining some scenarios that await the planet, including Argentina.

1) Is this the beginning of a new great global war?

The two world wars involved and confronted the then greatest military and political powers in the world, the United States, Russia and Great Britain, Germany, Japan. The rest of the world was divided to one side –the allies- or the other –the axis-. This new war directly involves Russia and to the United States, which, until now, insists that it will not participate militarily in the conflict in Ukraine.

To become a true world war, the other current superpower should intervene, China.

Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin sealed, three weeks ago, a strategic alliance to contain the United States on all fronts, from the economic and political to the cultural. However, for now, Beijing seems quite reluctant to participate militarily in the conflict. Two facts deter him: Russia’s and China’s military capabilities are growing steadily, but even if they were put together they would not surpass US might, according to a Rand Corporation report last year.

On the other hand, a global war would attack the Chinese economy and two of its main trading partners, the United States and the European Union (EU). Xi needs a robust economy to keep calm inside China and secure his power project.

Rather than at the gates of a third world war, the world is then facing the possibility of a new great European war. That, in turn, will depend on the panorama that opens from today.

2) What scenarios are opened then?

At this moment, Putin has the initiative due to the size and speed of the scenario that the West thought least likely: that of total invasion. In 12 hours, his forces entered from the North, East and South, a strategy that shakes Ukraine and forces the United States and European powers to rethink their response.

The scenario most widely envisioned by Western officials at this time is that Putin install your forces in Ukraineevict President Voledymyr Zelensky and appoint a “puppet government.” Faced with such a show of force, the sanctions proposed by the United States and the EU sound like little, and even more so if the occupation leaves a strengthened Putin, willing to redesign Europe’s security architecture, restore the spheres of influence of the Soviet era drive NATO away from its borders.

In that case, what would prevent it from advancing on nations that today, unlike Ukraine, are members of the Atlantic Alliance and even of the EU, such as Poland, Estonia, Lithuania or Latvia? If that were Putin’s way, Europe would be facing a continental war.

Will Western sanctions aimed at stifling the Russian economy and dissuading Putin from a long and painful occupation be able to prevent such a scenario? Or should the US and the EU get involved militarily? Washington and Brussels insist that their boots will not step on Ukraine in any way; they are still paying the costs of the failure of their mission in Afghanistan.

“Ukraine is not a member of the NATO, so that organization would not intervene directly. Everything now depends on the will to fight shown by the Ukrainians. And there would be several countries willing to help with weapons and training. It is key to look at the will of the Ukrainians to resist, ”says Gonzalo Paz, a professor at Georgetown University, specialized in China and Russia’s relations with Latin America, in dialogue with La Nación.

The armed insurgency of the Ukrainians could then turn their country into a kind of European Syria, another of the scenarios most mentioned by specialists.

3) Will the world economy suffer more?

Yes, that is the greatest certainty shared, at that time, by specialists. There are several reasons, summed up precisely in a briefing published by the consulting firm Eurasia just a few hours ago: “The Russian invasion will have far-reaching effects on the global economy, as the combination of Western sanctions, war disruptions, and Russian retaliation will lead to turbulence in energy markets, financial conditions more fragile and weaker global demand. The growth of the industrialized world will slow by at least one point, supply chains will suffer and there will be more protectionism.”

Russia Today it produces 10% of the 100 million barrels of oil a day that the world demands today to get out of the slump of the pandemic and generates 40% of the gas that Europe consumes.

Disruptions in these supplies will directly affect energy prices and will lead, among other things, to higher global inflation. In this scenario of global economic vulnerability, the most fragile countries will suffer more than others. Argentina is in that group.

4) What is the impact in Argentina?

The effect of the war in Ukraine on our country is almost direct for various reasons, mainly economic and political. The first direct impact is already being felt this morning: grain prices skyrocketed, good news since they are the country’s largest source of foreign exchange earnings. Ukraine is the fifth world producer of corn and the seventh of wheat (Russia is the fifth); the war raises the fear that this production will be paralyzed.

The good news ends there. Argentina will suffer, and a lot, with the price of gas, directly conditioned by the new war. Putin already began to close the gas tap to Europe a few months ago; The reduction in supply was offset by the import of liquid natural gas, mainly from the United States and Qatar, which, in turn, are the main suppliers of LNG to Argentina.

There the price paid by the country will be impacted, a phenomenon that would be felt in the winter and would even condition the price of tariffs, the central axis today of the discussion of an agreement with the IMF.

In other words, the short and medium-term impact of the war will be direct on the daily lives of Argentines and their pockets.

In the long term the impact will be political. And it will be deep. Three weeks ago, President Alberto Fernández visited Putin and confided in him that he was determined to cut off “Argentine dependency” on the United States and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The timing and content of the meeting were questioned as scandalous. Today, in retrospect, that definition falls short and that trip could be considered one of the worst foreign policy mistakes of recent decades.

At a critical moment in the negotiations with the IMF and at the zero hour of the new European war, Argentina chose to align itself with Russia. In Washington, the impact of that decision is felt in the lack of access to the key instances of the Joe Biden administration. In the world, you will feel more isolated from our country. An absolutely unpredictable world and, from today, much more dangerous.

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